Owledge

You play the game to learn not to play it. When you succeed, you pick a higher difficulty level. When you fail, you pick a lower one. Or is it the other way round?

Quite the chowdown.

I have an idea that's too good not to be brought to paper (or bitmap) and then published here, and I need someone who has the time for drawing something and wouldn't mind. It's really not difficult or taking long, and takes skill in achieving a special authentic look ... something unconventional. I don't want to give away any more hints, so if you'd enjoy it, please say so here and I'll PM you my idea. Thanks in advance!

It just saddens me a bit now, in retrospect. It is so rare so see someone actually pick a creative idea up for execution and then I never got to see the result.

Consciousness can be very tricky. I saw a movie in which somebody explained how to find out that you are dreaming, in order to control the dream. The clues were unreadable details like the time on the clock or non-functional light switches. Also in the movie, the protagonist later talked to a person in his dream about how it is like to be a dream character. One or two days later, I had a dream. I think it was in a classroom, but unconventional. I talked to the teacher about how my watch is very blurry and unreadable and how this is a clue of being in the dream state, and his clock was blurry, too. But then I tried to switch off the light and it worked ... I think ... not 100% sure. I then woke up and realized I have had a lucid dream. ... But then I woke up and realized that I had been fooled. Pretty weird, isn't it? Not having a lucid dream, but a dream of lucid dreaming. It took me a few minutes to completely realize what had happened. I analyzed my dream and realized that after the dreamt waking-up I thought: "OK, this time I realized that it was a dream, next time I'll try to really gain total control.", so there was no control, thus not really a lucid dream, just typical uncontrollable acting in a dream. P.S.: Hm, this topic might belong to the Tao forum. Admin, please move if you read this!

I may not even have had lucidity, because it's all basically an autopilot script that incorporates theme-defiance, so to speak. One can declare to be dreaming without having any deliberate control over own actions.

Someone had Chinese characters in his profile pic and I imagined them to be real-world objects and scenes one could draw. From what I could gather, Carson made them, but electronic transfer was a problem, and then that was it. We chatted about some other ideas and stuff shortly after that, but I think I never received the drawing, and he also got quite busy at some point.

Wow, I didn't remember having had this. Old thread. More recently I had a few experiences of calling my dream out as such and waking up soon after declaring that I was in a dream. In one case there was a recurring annoying dream theme and it upset me so that I was ranting within my dream like "Damn, every time I am dreaming, this crap happens!".

CBA to check whether I already mentioned all of them, but I did Blueberry/Renegade. Another obvious one that is very dear to me is The Fountain. But if you want to experience one that doesn't appear like one at first but requires own open eyes, try Revolver. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0365686/ Powder is great, too.

An old movie about a Conan-style guy on a quest in a fantasy-style world, making various encounters, including in the desert, that help him to know himself, is on the search for some book of ultimate truth or treasure and eventually finds it and it is just a mirror to look at his own face.

Thank you!

Things that exist, things that happen, inherently have meaning. Otherwise, what would be the point? Because a point is a thing that exists. And meaninglessness exists, too, which it could not without meaning. I hope I didn't make myself clear.

Is the mind not a thing that exists? And what but the mind could even make such a claim? Also, I tend to see the 'alchemy' like this: root = confidence crown = hope When both mix in the middle (heart), where balance can be achieved, they create faith. I.e. faith is hope empowered with confidence. Hope without confidence is the bemourning of powerlessness, running away, looking for external support. Confidence without hope is a survival machine with no direction, i.e. a cog-in-the-machine process, so entrapped in its own identity that it does not realize its powerlessness for having any transformative impact. When crown-imbalanced find root-imbalanced, they form an alliance that is a severely interdependent and fear-driven pseudo-balance with no harmony. ... But if we look at the system as a whole, beyond the egoic identity, it could still be quite 'valid'. Because while self-empowerment can be helpful, these things are always a matter of what is needed for balance, and self-empowerment can become a dogmatic mentality that cripples empathy by trying to teach everybody to become self-reliant and not perceive reliance on others, even though that is to some degree inevitable. (If you live in the woods in a log cabin and grow your own food, you had to buy the land with money you got somehow, and then you rely on a state authority to recognize your ownership of the land and defend it against malicious influences.)

Thoughts/theses: Accepting the meaninglessness of life allows to move past the concept of meaning to truly give life meaning, the act of giving being constituted by the act of accepting possibility, the act of perceiving. Controlling physical desires opens up to the concept of the beyond. Then surrendering control of physical desires transcends the concept of the beyond by neutralizing the fear function, the foolish quest of wanting to go there through elevating your level of control to beyond-level. But without first trying to control those desires, one cannot know the real thing through contrast. That is, the mind cannot know, but it must so that it can choose to surrender its control. Connecting with the creator power makes knowing a responsible choice. Then you know life has meaning because you said so. This is a crossroads phase. Those touching on it unprepared can become a manifester of their more basic motivations. But those who understand that seen from the source, everything is bullshit, are not afraid of it, and thereby are not ruled by it.

Isn't it a yang water tiger year? How about a tiger on a water slide? ROAR!

Because the means typically required to attain so much money make unhappy. That is the price of buying into it. Selling your soul. Closing the heart. But if someone attaines riches without having to jump through those soul-tainting hoops, that is not the case. That doesn't mean that all depressions can be resolved that way, but a lot of it is conditional; a reaction to sick society. From my own experience I can say that I can identify dozens if not hundreds of issues of different magnitude in my life that I have been struggling for many years with, trying to figure out how to deal with them, resolve them, and they would all dissolve if I had a financially secured future, enough money to shape my own domain, so to speak. I can do many things in a smart and thoughtful way, and it low-level drives me nuts to be coercibly subjected to the rules and ways of stupid/rotten people. That might sound blunt, but I burned out trying to compromise and arrange. It is like a slow death. The soul cannot breathe freely, get some relief from lifelong deprivation.

You definitely do.

Still not helping with those ominous, sloppily worded Twitter-style platitudes.

You are not helping with that very subjective statement. Things get really simple once a thorough understanding is attained, because the basics become clear.

Diet basics on a budget: Quality over quantity. Moderate meals lead to more efficient digestion. Typical healthy poor people meals: Canned herring or other fatty fish. If sardines, consider sprats instead. They're fattier. Consider price of something, especially calories. A can of cod liver for example seems relatively expensive, but is super-high in energy. Provides plenty of easily digestible omega 3, plus vitamin D and others. (Vitamin D deficiency is rampant in northern regions and more so in our troubled lockdown times. Can't get enough from food, though. I recommend this single one as supplement. It boosts immune system.) Needs getting used to the amount of fat, though. (Easier to digest if on a slice of dark whole-grain bread.) But fat doesn't trigger insulin, the substance which is the crux of it all. And it provides fat-soluble vitamins. Super-lean diet is problematic. Zinc also boosts the immune system a lot. Worth informing yourself about which of such nutrients is plenty in which foods. A diluted sip of apple cider vinegar daily can curb insulin problems from sugar intake and make digestion stronger. Freezer broccoli. Heat it up in the microwave, ~4-6 minutes. Great if you can find a sauce hollandaise or such that tastes good. - Broccoli is one of the healthiest veggies there are. (Like any type of kale-like vegetable.) Some people call it Brocco Lee. Burger patty. Ideally not the cheapest possible, because the diet of the cattle matters, too. Pick one without tons of added ingredients, just pure spiced meat. Eat it without buns. It is fattier and easier to digest than steak. Cheese is always a good choice. Good mix of fat and protein and has plenty of other nutrients, easy to digest. Might be a bit more expensive than milk in other forms, though, but depends on the price/quality level. But energy-wise, the processed products are better than milk where you pay for the water, too. Actually, just drinking a bit of cream when you feel like it is not a bad idea. If you like yoghurt, pick the 'Greek' 10% one. - Personally, I enjoy a daily snack of an ounce of salted Irish sweet cream butter. I get it at a discount and the price per calorie is unbeatable. Eggs! Scrambled or such. Nature's multivitamin. A real feelgood meal, in part because it provides a balanced range of most of what you need. Make your own kefir with kefir grains. Super-probiotic that populates your colon with bacteria that can provide you with very good additional nutrients. - Some people may still be sharing excess kefir grains for free. Get powdered garlic, add water, let it sit for 1-5 minutes and then mix the paste into suitable meals right before eating. Garlic is super-healthy and the water brings it out. Gotta gradually get used to such a diet change, though, so that the body can make good use of it. If you have a desire for variety, eat a little bit of many different things as your daily meal. That can include some sweets, because it is just a bit of it, so it is fine. Don't torture yourself with diet extremism. Prefer whole-grain if you want to eat that high-carb stuff. Brown rice, whole-grain spaghetti or such. Or at least parboiled rice. Doesn't have to cost more than the regular one, but contains so many more nutrients. The main problem with carbs is often their refined state which drains your body of nutrients. Unprocessed foods tend to contain the things you need to avoid problems with them. If you're still on a 3-meals-a-day pattern, skip breakfast. Try to have few larger meals, no snacking. (Which becomes easier when not on an insulin rollercoaster.) - Lots of fat, moderate protein, little carbs, especially sugar. Some carbs with high fiber is quite alright. If you combine that with some exercise, that's potent. No need for motivation. Just do some casual, spontaneous pushups once of twice a day until you go oof, to get things in motion, and/or some other basic movement exercises, whatever you like. Psychological trick: Wear undershirt at home. That's fitness studio style and you can look at your muscles and such, which drives body health awareness.

Theory and praxis. Before, but much more so recently, psychological help is highly sought after. Part of your mental state sounds like what I had and to a fluctuating degree still have, too. I can give you something worthwhile to do. How is your diet? Because in a time of particular weakness we might worsen our diet and then that troubles the psyche and it's a vicious cycle. Being well-educated about the basics of healthy diet, which often is the opposite of what the sheeple is being told, is invaluable and can empower you at the root. Back then I learned a lot from this channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/DrEricBergDC And while the guy still requires some skepticism about details where he might not be very accurate, the basics of his approach are very valuable. I can give you more details and summaries about what I did, but maybe check the channel out first and if you have questions then, you can ask me again. Regarding antidepressants, they can also cause problems, and extreme measures might actually still be an expression of the problem. I take 1000 mg St. John's Wort twice a day and I seem to be noticing an effect, which is also scientifically sound, so having that as a long-term baseline is not a bad idea. Take good stuff, avoid bad stuff, identify deficiencies. Don't carb/sugar-binge. Psychologically, practice techniques for not letting your boredom/lack of purpose drag you down. Bluntly and broadly speaking, it stems from society's hamsterwheel dictating we have to be useful and productive, but what we actually have to be is happy, serene, carry some inner calm. Appreciate the immense value of slacking when your body tells you through feelings that it is the right thing to do at the time. It is the mind that makes stress about that, but those are usually 'implants' by society trying to recruit you into other people's managed unhappiness so that the contrast doesn't disturb them so much. - There is a lot of societal gaslighting going on where well-spirited people are conned into thinking they aren't contributing enough while those that do the conning are actually the ones who go the selfishly convenient way and maybe overall even make things worse.

Why do I even still bother? Rarely still seems too often. Non-effort is king. (?) And this is the video in question: And here is the video description whose magical invisiblity bubble also causes people to ask about the movie title roughly every other day: Memorable scene from the Bruce Lee movie "Enter the Dragon" from 1973. EXTENSIVE COMMENTARY FOLLOWING... ↴↴↴ Like the Dao De Jing, this is deep wisdom to ponder and meditate on, not mere text to consume. And the world is always in great need of wisdom like this. I hope I'm not playing into the hands of intellectual laziness by giving my view on things here. It's just that so many people cannot see the real thing without something artificial pointing the way. I guess it's skillful to apply that approach in very difficult cases, but it is always a tradeoff, taking away deeper understanding by doing some of the walking for the student. Then again... there's always plenty more lessons to be learned. Big leaps aren't always feasible. Some aspects are difficult to convey accurately, but I'll just approximate. After all, these words are just a help for gaining insight. There's no inherent truth in the words themselves. - The student there makes the mistake of trying to perform a move, a kick. That is just the means to an end and indicates why Bruce Lee developed his Jeet Kune Do, his no-technique approach. Technique can distract from the aim and make inflexible. (And also eventually limit our full potential.) - When he talks about emotional content, not anger, you might be confused, since anger is an emotion. But that emotion is not appropriate for achieving the goal in that exercise. (It is also further portrayal, form, not authentic. It should rather be called "aggression" there.) Bruce Lee is teaching about an emotional connection to people and things you interact with and to let that define a driving intention; to put the focus on the envisioned result and then make yourself a tool for its manifestation. Ideas and concepts about how to bring that about can become a distraction and make the path to the goal less than optimal. Lack of realization of this wisdom leads to martial arts students neglecting the philosophy side of the art ... about when to fight and why. (How do you strike an opponent? ...By intending to.) - The concentrating-on-the-finger theme is at least in part about the confusion of means and ends and turning the means into ends, which happens oh so often, especially in people who are more pragmatically than idealistically inclined. It's a huge topic with numerous types of manifestation in our society; far too complex to talk about in great detail here. Let's just say that many people yearn for that heavenly glory but keep digging deeper into the finger trying to find it. Then things get more complex, when the real deal is quite simple. But logic cannot see emotion, and when the fear-based rational mind with its confusion schemes is in control, the world of pure emotion is unfathomable. Many people can only experience it by keeping it neatly separated from the rational world view, and external attempts to soften up that barrier and bring both worlds together will be met with resistance. The courageous person will seek to face fears whenever they feel strong enough, while the fearful person will avoid this even when given plenty of help and shy away from the smallest of challenges as long as facing them doesn't become unavoidable. We're all acting one way or the other depending on the situation. Remember your moments of courage and be inspired by them. With more people showing courage, it becomes easier for the fearful to find their courage, too. (Except maybe for those enslaved by convenience's allure.) At least start the journey somewhere! When you are fixating on the finger, you know your fear is in control of you. ( I have come to this conclusion: Perfection is 50% control. ) Message to everybody: Beware of taking on challenges that are too great and beware of shying away from challenges that are tiny. Be wise enough to see the difference. The mere act of asking yourself these questions in sincere pursuit of your personal truth helps you gain insight. Whatever you do, you become better at it. (So choose your actions well.) Life is a game about overcoming fears. And you are never alone in this game! Fear separates, love unites. Let's work together! (Or we will perish alone.) P.S.: I recently heard a Bruce Lee quote that I can relate to a lot: "A wise man can learn more from a foolish question than a fool can learn from a wise answer." UPDATE: Little edit I made based on this that demonstrates Bruce's combat prowess. ^^ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lY6Jp... UPDATE 2: This matter in my flavor: https://dowlphin.deviantart.com/art/B... -----------------Annotations------------------ I will teach what valuable things I know, and I will never feel bad or inferior for still having so much to learn myself. All that a person can learn in a lifetime is nothing compared to all that there is to learn. (Fair Use of brief movie extract for commentary.) Any thoughts, comments, insights, anecdotes, rants etc. about this 'problem'/non-problem/topic? I can only say at this point that almost instantly predicting accurately whether someone is even worth talking to is a very valuable spiritual practice.

But they have been cutting each other open a lot and didn't find it. 😜 Apart from that, the theme is very familiar to me... Revolver - great movie. Underappreciated due to bad marketing approach. It's actually a spiritual movie and among my favorites. (I also like The Fountain and Blueberry/Renegade.)

The words alone could have failed in so many ways, but when the time and place and source and means of delivery are right, it can throw someone off balance. When I read that, it reminded me of the eerie moments of dawning realization I vaguely remember from ayahuasca experiences. That moment where one feels like having been shown 'the whole conspiracy', suddenly stuff feels magical, and even if it is just the surrounding circumstances, the how instead of the what, the feeling is the actual potency, the core of it all, the heart-opening that opens the mind, as opposed to our default state where the mind decides when and how much the heart is allowed to open. Truth is best told in a hug.* *) Could also say "through" a hug. - Which is the messenger and which is the message? P.S.: When good people move on when naturally drawn to, it is never a loss. It might only be perceived as one for our ego. But those who understand the supreme power of the subtle, quiet currents know that it will be good for the whole system, nourish the root of all things. It is by the nature of the dynamic that the purest cure for current society's ailments will fly under its radar. This world is arguably obsessed with doing, so only through doing less can we change it towards balance. Good luck will be with us. We wish so. It is our intention. No one could stop it but one alone.

I was a bit puzzled by your response at first and had to do some investigation. Apparently you are referring to Draco's posting behavior, which indeed looks quite quantity-over-quality/low-effort/preachy-spammy, especially the General-section thread creation as far as I can see. Could be interesting to discuss the deep (or shallow) motivations behind it. @Draco, do you wish to comment? P.S.: I do find it somewhat amusingly peculiar that he has "Nekromantia" in his title.